The Three Taps by Ronald A. Knox — Read

They did not escape another dose of Mrs. Davis, who appeared soon afterward to announce that the big room upstairs was ready for them, and would they step up and mind their heads please, the stairs were that low. It was indeed a rambling sort of house, on three or four different levels, as country inns are wont to be; it did not seem possible to reach any one room from any other without going down and up again or up and down again. At the head of the stairs Mrs. Davis turned dramatically and pointed to a door marked "5. " "In there! " she said, the complicated emotion in her voice plainly indicating what was in there. To her obvious confusion the door opened as she spoke, and a little, dark man, whom they guessed then and knew afterward to be the secretary, came out into the passage. He was followed by a policeman -- no ingenuity could have doubted the fact -- in plain clothes. Bredon's investigations were ordinarily made independently of, and for the most part unknown to, the official champions of justice. But on this occasion Fate had played into his hands. "By Gad! " he cried, "it's Leyland!"

It was, and I will not weary the reader by detailing the exclamations of surprise, the questionings, the reminiscences, the explanations which followed. Leyland had been an officer in the same battalion with Bredon for more than two years of the war. It was at a time when the authorities had perceived that there were not enough well-dressed young men in England to go round, and a Police Inspector who had already made a name for efficiency easily obtained commissioned rank; with equal ease he returned to the position of an Inspector when demobilized. Their memories of old comradeship promised to be so exhaustive and, to the lay mind, so exhausting, that Brinkman had gone downstairs and Angela Bredon to their room long before it was over; nay, Mrs. Davis herself, outtalked for once, retired to her kitchen.